3 ms·

Touch is very laggy on iPads. It's still eminently usable, and there's nothing better, so no one complains. But to an interaction expert like Ive, it must be r

by 6ren 13y ago

Touch is very laggy on iPads. It's still eminently usable, and there's nothing better, so no one complains. But to an interaction expert like Ive, it must be really horrible - it certainly seems so to me. In contrast, mouse-pointer movements are perceptually instant, and have been for many years. Removing skeumorphism (and its heavy graphics) would help with this, as would the faster graphics, cpus and memory bandwidth in later iOS devices (there's surely a contribution to lag from the touch screen itself, but I don't know what it is). So I hope this is what he's working towards. If it is, it will be something that everyone will love, without knowing beforehand that they needed it.

kybernetyk 13y ago
Touch on current devices is laggy because of inherent touch screen hardware restrictions. It has nothing to do with how much the CPU and GPU are utilized by the OS. There's some research done on reducing the latency. For example Microsoft's work: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=160670 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=160...
- 6ren 13y ago
  Thanks! I didn't realize so much latency came from the device itself, but it's good to see confirming evidence that decreasing it would tremendously improve the experience. That's worthwhile research to measure how much improvement makes a difference (i.e. until it becomes imperceptible), but unfortunately I get the impression they are only measuring it, not solving it. I gather their test setup is faked, just to enable measurement, because of the careful way he expresses it (I expect it doesn't actually use touch). I hate to reference a youtube comment for support, but the top one says it's IR + projector http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 And other links to that "Applied Sciences" Group don't mention any on-going research on it (or even the guy in the video)... http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/asc/default.aspx http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/asc/default.aspx Searching ms research didn't up any other mention of the two researchers involved (Albert Ng and Paul Dietz) - Albert's now at Stanford, and Paul seems to have many projects. 100ms to 1ms is a long way...

by 6ren 13y ago

kybernetyk 13y ago

Touch on current devices is laggy because of inherent touch screen hardware restrictions. It has nothing to do with how much the CPU and GPU are utilized by the OS. There's some research done on reducing the latency. For example Microsoft's work: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=160670 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=160...

6ren 13y ago
Thanks! I didn't realize so much latency came from the device itself, but it's good to see confirming evidence that decreasing it would tremendously improve the experience. That's worthwhile research to measure how much improvement makes a difference (i.e. until it becomes imperceptible), but unfortunately I get the impression they are only measuring it, not solving it. I gather their test setup is faked, just to enable measurement, because of the careful way he expresses it (I expect it doesn't actually use touch). I hate to reference a youtube comment for support, but the top one says it's IR + projector http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 And other links to that "Applied Sciences" Group don't mention any on-going research on it (or even the guy in the video)... http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/asc/default.aspx http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/asc/default.aspx Searching ms research didn't up any other mention of the two researchers involved (Albert Ng and Paul Dietz) - Albert's now at Stanford, and Paul seems to have many projects. 100ms to 1ms is a long way...